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An FU Rant, Because I Can

If our society consisted of a small group of people just starting out in this new world, we’d individually pay the local doctor on an as-needed basis for our care. As costs skyrocketed because of new technology, taking on more difficult to cure diseases instead of letting each other die, we’d probably come to the reasonable conclusion that we might all end up in the same boat someday, so why not pool our money with small contributions to cover everyone in our community, insuring help awaits us should we need it. So simple, so easy, providing security and happiness for all (thus giving rise to the concept of community). Only the local curmudgeon (there’s always one) and his extremist nutcase brother, would oppose it because they’re pissed off about their state in life and have vowed to love to hate.

Luckily they are the extremists – they’re not supposed to be leaders. Reasonable people should tell them to fuck off.

Then Bob comes along and says to himself – being the entrepreneur that he is – boy, if I could get everyone to pay me to manage this thing, I could make a lot of dough. Being a capitalist society, Bob convinces our small community that he could do a better job than our bureaucratic government at making sure everything runs smoothly and that no one is unfairly abusing the system. Fine, only no one seems to notice or mind that healthcare costs increased even more because Bob now needs his 20 percent.

So this is the system we’re stuck with, that we actually accept as sensible, as long as everyone works for corporate America. If you’re an artist or musician or self-employed or a part-time worker, etc., you can choose to buy into Bob’s system if you want to, just don’t use it. Because if you do, Bob will probably drop you. After all, this isn’t a healthcare system, it’s a for-profit business set up to make Bob wealthy, and Bob decides whether or not you’re a good customer. Bob decides whether you live or die. Fuck you Bob.

I’ve been without healthcare for about a year now, having been inexplicably dropped by shit-bag Bob probably because I put it to use while passing a kidney stone the size of Mount Rushmore. So instead of reapplying, and thus having kidney stones deemed a pre-existing condition, I’ve been waiting for Obamacare to kick in to avoid being so easily dismissed. Soon I’ll be covered again, unless certain politicians have their way.

I swear, if it wasn’t such a hassle, I’d move to a more civilized country, probably a European nation that offers healthcare to its people and is progressively involved in making the world a better place, one that trumps our so-called great number one nation in just about every category minus the ability to repeatedly bomb – or shoot – the shit out of everyone on the planet.

We all know that Obamacare was a republican plan that came out of the right-wing “think” tank the Heritage Foundation. But republicans now oppose this approach. Why? Because a democrat pushed it through. There’s no other reasonable explanation.

If Obama was a republican, the majority of republicans would be supporting Obamacare, and I’d bet most democrats would oppose it for not being Medicaid for all. This is what politics does to us. It turns us into fucking morons that would rather destroy ourselves and vote against our own interests than give into the opposition. So because of politics – because of the desire for power – healthcare becomes a manufactured crisis we fight over while millions go without, allowing some to actually die.

Luckily our national media is determined to dig up the truth and keep us all well informed. Only they, too (with the exception of NPR), are a for-profit business which can’t afford to piss off the half of its viewership that have bought into Bob’s fucked up system, so instead of investigative reporting they ride the wave of social opinion and trivial trends to put on a vacuously hollow show. A website launch fails, so obviously the President should be dismantled and put away and his agenda burned and banned; Obamacare is unsurprisingly flawed – even the President doesn’t understand it all, so his opposition refers to it as his Katrina moment and the media goes along with this comparison as if it had an ounce of fucking merit; few people sign up for the new system amidst all the chaos, so they deem it a colossal failure because we’ve become so sensationalized that we can no longer understand human fucking nature.

Let me explain it. I’m as lazy as a drunken sloth on an extended tropical vacation, hoping beyond hope that I’ll win the lotto so I can maintain this luxuriant lifestyle. Except that I’m too damn lazy to go buy a ticket. I procrastinate. I don’t do anything until I absolutely have to because I’d rather be sipping a chilled margarita on a secluded topless beach than filling out frustratingly tedious forms on a website that will, essentially, do nothing for me except add to the mountain of bills I’m already struggling to pay.

When the website launched the last thing I was going to do was jump on that bandwagon of fun when so many others would be doing the same. Certainly there’d be glitches galore. I wouldn’t stand in line for a new fancy phone or any other high-tech device either, knowing it’s just a matter of time before the problems surface and corrections have to be made. And why sign up right away when the insurance doesn’t kick in the next day? Might as well wait. So of course the sign up numbers are lower than fucking low. Does this really need to be explained? Is the media so beholden to sensationalism as a product that they’ve lost the last remnants of whatever integrity they might have once had?

Some actually call this liberal media. If it was liberal it would focus on raising intelligent discourse in this country to what is progressively better instead of appealing to the status quo low. The evening national news has thirty minutes to inform us of all that’s going on in the country and around the planet. With so many global events, from war to scientific progress, it must be a struggle to decide which stories to squeeze into such a short time spot.

So what do they broadcast with such precious limited time? The other night they chose to include the immensely important information that McDonald’s – a skanky restaurant that feeds rot gut slime to the masses – is installing a new drive-through food lane to better handle the mindless herd. My head nearly exploded from the incredulity. Why the fuck don’t they report on who is standing in the way of progress? Who is it that has spent the last six years doing everything possible to bring this country to a fucking halt? Who is fearful of change, who has stood against everything Obama, the man this country voted into power, has tried to do?

Or how about a nightly report on what we are doing to combat global warming, an event so troubling that most people live with a fear in the back of their minds that their children might not be left with a survivable planet that can sustain them full-term? This is holy shit fucking news that we seldom hear of until something huge happens like a massive glacier breaking apart or another storm of the century rips through or the occasional report on the sad state of the dying polar bears, and even then global warming is only mentioned as an almost apologetic aside.

We don’t need a nightly report to cause panic and fear and depression, but one to remind us, to motivate us, to inspire us to live in harmony with the planet we depend on. As bad as things are, there are many out there pursuing creative innovations that just might solve all of our problems, and they could use our support, but you’d never know it if all you did was listen to the nightly news.

When are we going to ignore the ignorant among us, the Bob’s of the world who believe business is always the answer, that providing needed government services should be for-profit operations – morons like Cruz and Palin and Bachmann, whom most reasonably intelligent people agree are fools – and focus on greatness? We aspire for it, we’re attracted to it. Crowds gathered around Tiger Woods just to see if he could put a ball in a hole, they built a statue for Michael Jordan for doing the same, and we flocked to Grant Park to listen to President Elect Obama speak about hope and change. Since then we have sat back and watched and waited for his greatness to emerge, apparently expecting him to somehow overcome republicans who have decided their only purpose in life is to bring him down, because they believe Bob was right in making profit more important than our health. They’ve dug in their heels and stomped their feet like two-year olds, hell-bent on preventing greatness, because if greatness occurred when they were without power, they fear they’d never get it back.

Oh, and a special fuck you to Mitt Romney. You don’t get to come back and talk about Obama’s “twisted” healthcare system when you implemented a similar system in Massachusetts. You sold your soul to the curmudgeon’s extremist nutcase brother hoping for his vote. People with no integrity don’t, or shouldn’t, win elections. Just ask John McCain. You lost, you’re a loser, so go away, and take your magical underpants and all your money to a remote island and spend the rest of your days rolling around in it, because we all know you’re highly unlikely to do anything of actual value with all that cash, given your sentiments about the poor. The only good you’ll do is give mostly to charities that, ultimately, only serve to promote your own twisted interests. Please tell us, what exactly are you and your previously mentioned bowl of buffoons actually doing for our community? Meaning our united community, as in, the US of A. That’s what I thought. I’ll leave you and all the other Bob’s of the world with two words of wisdom to mull over.

I hear you. The US health care system boggles my mind. All of our science and technology, all of our medical training and expertise, and this is what people here must deal with? Those two words are right!